crying game

plural crying games

1. informalA situation where someone cries in a spiteful, self-indulgent, or attention-seeking manner.

   Waaaaa! Waaaaa! If you let it, life can become nothing more than a crying game that is void of accountability and void of responsibility.

   2011, Perry Pokrandt, Life Lessons: What Experience Teaches Us About Success, Xlibris, published 2011, →ISBN, page 293

   1 more example

   It's only when you remove all remnants of the guy from your life that you can move on. No Contact. Until you are completely over the guy, avoid all contact. If the guy's an asshole, he'll try to contact you, and probably run the crying game on you.

   2011, Willie Booker, Life’s Too Short to Date Men Like Me, iUniverse, published 2011, →ISBN, page 58

1. attributiveinformaloftenA situation in which something or someone is revealed to be other than assumed/expected to be, particularly with regard to gender identity.

   “Fair enough. So you didn't know I was a man?” “I'd guess you'd call this my personal Crying Game moment.”

   2015, Harlan Coben, Missing You, Dutton, published 2014, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   Man, what a way to pop a balloon full of promise! It was like waiting to be with the girl of your dreams and you end up in the Crying Game.

   2002, David Payton, I Dreamed I Killed Osama Bin Laden, Trafford, →ISBN

   We copped a feel of the technical beta of Microsoft's Windows Media Player 10, and beneath the slick new interface we found a Crying Game-scale surprise that has the potential to lure insatiable music grazers away from iTunes (which has now sold more than 100 million tracks).

   2004 September, “Hands on Microsoft's Windows Media Player 10”, in Maximum PC, page 15